‘Perhaps,’ he said suddenly, ‘that would be the answer.’

‘Answer to what?’

‘The answer to what we should do about this inconvenient attraction I feel for you.’

‘I…I don’t understand you.’

‘Oh, yes, you do.’

He closed the distance she’d put between them and murmured into her ear again. The heat of his breath slid all the way down her spine.

‘We should become lovers, Lydia. And lay the past to rest in your bed.’

He straightened up and gave her a slow, sultry perusal.

‘Just send me word. Whenever you are ready I will be more than happy to oblige.’

AUTHOR NOTE

The house in which I’ve set this story was inspired by Sezincote, the home of a genuine ‘nabob’. He had gone out to India as a young man, risen through the ranks of the East India Company Army, and returned to England in his later years a very wealthy man. When he designed the mansion where he intended to spend his retirement, he provided his architect with sketches he’d drawn of Mogul architecture, which he wanted incorporated in his home.

In 1807 the Prince Regent heard about this unique house, whilst staying with the Marquess of Hertford at Ragley Hall, and drove over to take a look. He was so impressed that he promptly decided his Pavilion at Brighton should have domes and minarets, too…only more of them! There is still a picture hanging in one of the main reception rooms of Sezincote of the Prince Regent tooling his curricle up the drive.

There are reminders of India throughout the grounds, too. Statues of Brahmin bulls adorn the parapets of the bridge that takes visitors over the stream that winds through the gardens. And instead of having a classical Greek temple, which is a feature of so many stately homes of England, there really is a temple to Suraya, the Hindu goddess of the sun.

About the Author

ANNIE BURROWS has been making up stories for her own amusement since she first went to school. As soon as she got the hang of using a pencil she began to write them down. Her love of books meant she had to do a degree in English literature. And her love of writing meant she could never take on a job where she didn’t have time to jot down notes when inspiration for a new plot struck her. She still wants the heroines of her stories to wear beautiful floaty dresses and triumph over all that life can throw at them. But when she got married she discovered that finding a hero is an essential ingredient to arriving at ‘happy ever after’.

Previous novels by Annie Burrows:

HIS CINDERELLA BRIDE

MY LADY INNOCENT

THE EARL’S UNTOUCHED BRIDE

CAPTAIN FAWLEY’S INNOCENT BRIDE

THE RAKE’S SECRET SON

(part of Regency Candlelit Christmas anthology)

DEVILISH LORD, MYSTERIOUS MISS

THE VISCOUNT AND THE VIRGIN

(part of Silk & Scandal Regency mini-series)

A COUNTESS BY CHRISTMAS

CAPTAIN CORCORAN’S HOYDEN BRIDE

AN ESCAPADE AND AN ENGAGEMENT

GOVERNESS TO CHRISTMAS BRIDE

(part of Gift-Wrapped Governesses anthology)

NEVER TRUST A RAKE

Also available in eBook format in Mills & Boon ® Historical Undone!:

NOTORIOUS LORD, COMPROMISED MISS

HIS WICKED CHRISTMAS WAGER

Do you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

Reforming
the Viscount
Annie Burrows

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To all the scientists and doctors who’ve discovered medicines to cure us, vaccinations to protect us, and treatments to help us through diseases that used to kill and maim the most vulnerable members of society.

Chapter One

‘Who is that man you are staring at?’

Rose’s question snapped Lydia straight out of her state of heart-fluttering, dry-mouthed, weakkneed tumult.

‘I was not staring at anyone.’

She’d managed to remember she was supposed to be setting an example for her stepdaughter, and behaved with as much circumspection as she’d ever been able to achieve at the age of eighteen. She’d watched him surreptitiously, in a series of thirsty little glances, knowing that gazing at him directly, with her heart in her eyes, would be fatal.

Though not only for herself, this time round. Poor Rose had enough to contend with, during her first Season, without the behaviour of her stepmama adding fuel to the fire. So far, people were treating her as though she was a perfectly respectable widow. To her face, at least. But a woman’s reputation was a fragile thing, and she knew—oh, yes, she knew—that there must be talk. How could there not be?

‘Yes, but you do know him, don’t you? The handsome one. The man over there, talking to Lord Chepstow and his friends.’

‘Oh, him,’ said Lydia airily, striving to conceal how guilty she felt at having been caught out. Sometimes, Rose reminded her of her own chaperon, Mrs Westerly. Both of them noticed everything.

‘Do not waste your time in that direction,’ the eagle-eyed woman had warned her, when she’d noticed her doing exactly what she was doing tonight. ‘The entire family is at point-non plus. Yet again. They have a habit of marrying heiresses to pull them out of the mire. Not that this particular Hemingford is showing any signs of wishing to give up his bachelor lifestyle just yet. But you mark my words, when the time comes, he will do as his forebears have always done.’

‘Yes, I do know him, slightly,’ she admitted. ‘That is the Honourable…’ honourable? Hah! Not so as you’d notice ‘…Nicholas Hemingford.’

‘Oh, do tell me all about him.’

‘There isn’t much to tell,’ said Lydia, blushing at the outright lie.

For she’d fallen head-over-heels in love with him. In spite of his reputation. In spite of her chaperon’s dire warnings. Like a moth to a flame, she’d been completely unable to withstand the pull of that lop-sided, slightly self-deprecating smile of his, never mind the mischievous twinkle in his blue, blue eyes.

She hadn’t stood a chance when he’d decided, for his own typically eccentric reasons, to turn the full force of his charm upon her.

She mocked her younger self for feeling as though he’d thrown her a lifeline, for it had turned out to be no more than a gossamer thread of wishful thinking. Which had snapped the moment she had to put it to the test.

‘I danced with him once or twice during my own Season,’ she told Rose, striving to make it sound as though it had been a trivial matter.

‘And you have never forgotten him,’ observed Rose with typical astuteness.

‘No.’ She sighed. And then, because if she didn’t give Rose the impression she was being open with her, she would never let the matter drop until she’d wrung the very last ounce of the truth from her, she admitted, ‘He is not the kind of person one forgets. He is so…unique.’

‘Really? In what way?’

‘Well, for one thing, he was an incorrigible flirt,’ she said tartly. ‘I used to watch him regularly reducing the prettiest girls in the room into giggling, blushing confusion, then saunter away while they all sighed after his retreating back. Usually straight over to the plainest, most unprepossessing of the wallflowers drooping on the sidelines, where he would make her evening by leading her into a set of country dances.’

‘Well…that was kind of him.’

When Lydia frowned, Rose added, ‘Wasn’t it?’

‘I do not think kindness forms part of his character,’ she said repressively. ‘It just amused him to set female hearts a-flutter. His real interest was always gambling. No doubt what he is doing now,’ she said, indicating the group of men who had all subtly shifted position to include him in their number, ‘is arranging to meet them in the card room later.’

‘But…’ Rose was frowning ‘…if he only danced with the wallflowers, how is it—?’

‘I was quite ill, if you recall, by the time I met your father. My chaperon insisted I attend every event to which I’d received an invitation, in the hope I would somehow make a conquest. Which wore me down. So I was not in looks.’

What an understatement! Mrs Westerly had insisted she apply rouge to disguise her pallor and rice powder to conceal the shadows under her eyes. It had made her resemble a walking corpse. Or so the charmed circle surrounding that Season’s reigning beauty had sniggered, as she’d walked past.

The night she’d tumbled so hopelessly in love with Nicholas Hemingford, she had been, indisputably, the most desperately unhappy female in the place. Her Season had started out badly and gone steadily downhill. And after overhearing the cutting comments about her appearance, she’d started to try to edge her way out of the ballroom, desperate for some respite from the heat, the crush, the overwhelming sense of failure. Otherwise he might never have noticed her.

Just as he had not noticed her tonight. He was sauntering away from the group of men now, heading unerringly for the furthest corner of the ballroom, where a rather plump young lady was sitting somewhat apart from the others, looking a bit forlorn.

Oh lord, he was doing it again.

The plump girl’s face lit up when he bowed over her hand. Lydia knew just how that girl felt as he escorted her across the room to the set which was starting to form. She would hardly be able to believe that a man as handsome as Mr Hemingford had actually asked her to dance without any coercion from the matrons who sometimes prompted the younger men to do their duty by the girls who lacked partners. Her heart would be fluttering, her soul brimming with gratitude. Pray God this one didn’t mistake his casual fit of knight-errantry for anything meaningful and get it broken.

‘Why do you suppose,’ said Rose thoughtfully, ‘he only dances with plain girls?’

‘Well, he would tell you,’ she replied, ‘that everyone deserves to enjoy themselves when they attend a ball, no matter what. He would say that he hated having to look at long faces, and if nobody else would do anything about it, then he would.’

‘But you don’t think that was true?’

‘Oh, no.’ She laughed a little bitterly. ‘Once, he actually admitted that there was no point in asking any of the eligible females on the premises to dance, because their chaperons would not have granted him permission. He was considered too dangerous.’

‘Dangerous?’ Rose’s eyes widened. ‘And was he?’

‘Oh, yes.’ To the peace of mind of lonely, desperately unhappy females, anyway.

She inhaled sharply. Then breathed out slowly.

There was no point in getting angry about the way he’d made her yearn for the impossible. Nor the careless way he’d tempted her into believing it was within her grasp. It had all happened what felt like a lifetime ago.

Except that seeing him again made it feel as though it had only been yesterday.

At her first sight of him, she’d reacted exactly as she had done when she’d been an impressionable girl of Rose’s age. And she could hardly tear her eyes away from him as he led the plump girl on to the floor.

Though there was some consolation in noticing she was not the only female tracking his progress across the ballroom with fascination.

For there was something about the way he moved that always drew admiring glances. While some men could manage to look impressive only when standing perfectly still, striking a pose, Nicholas Hemingford brought a kind of languid grace to the steps which had the effect of making her insides turn to molten toffee.

When the gentlemen lined up, facing her, he ended up standing practically opposite her. And though she didn’t want to, she simply couldn’t help taking the opportunity, while his attention was all on his partner, to take a good long look at him.

Oh, but he was just as handsome as ever. His light brown hair was cut slightly shorter nowadays, but other than that, he’d hardly changed at all. Just as fit and trim, and elegantly dressed as ever.

Typical! Why couldn’t he have run to fat, or developed the raddled complexion of so many of his contemporaries? But, no—he’d managed to carry on with his dissipated lifestyle and emerged unscathed. Just as he’d always done.

She snapped open her fan and waved it vigorously before her heated cheeks. It gave her something to occupy her hands, instead of clenching them into fists and pounding them into the nearest hard surface.

The movement must have caught his eye, for his head jerked up and for a moment or two he looked straight at her.

Her heart pounded against her ribs. She lifted her chin and stared right back at him.

Yes, Nicholas, it’s me. Look. I survived. And now I’m back. And what have you to say for yourself?

To her shock, and fury, his gaze slid right past her without so much as a flicker of recognition.

‘It did not look as though he remembered you, Mama Lyddy,’ said Rose, unwittingly touching on the bruise he’d just inflicted.

‘No. Well,’ she bit out, ‘why should he? It has been eight years since he last saw me. And I was only one of a large crowd of insignificant females he favoured with his attentions.’

All these years, in spite of everything, she’d hugged her memories of him to herself in secret. But it looked as though he’d forgotten all about her.

Because she hadn’t really meant anything to him, had she?

‘Is something the matter?’

‘It is a little lowering,’ she admitted, ‘to be so completely unmemorable.’

It was worse than that. Until now, she’d harboured a faint hope that he might have meant what he’d said, even if only for those few heady moments when he’d held her in his arms. The words he’d murmured into her ears that had made her feel as though she was clasped in a lover’s embrace…when the reality was that he’d only caught her up because she’d almost fainted. And he’d been nearest to her when it happened. Anyone would have been chivalrous enough to carry her into the shade. And yet, for those few minutes it had taken to carry her into the cool interior of the house, it had felt as though he was transporting her to heaven. Feeling his arms round her, being so close she could inhale his unique scent as she burrowed her face into his shoulder, hearing him say the words she’d never believed a man like him could say—words of yearning, and possibility, that had made her heart soar with hope…

Not that hope had lasted all that long.

The moment he’d put her down, he’d backed away, his face a picture of regret.

And he’d never come near her again.

The band struck up, the gentlemen bowed to their partners, and Lydia delved into her reticule for a handkerchief.

‘Mama Lyddy?’

Rose was looking at her with concern.

Lydia blew her nose rather crossly, since if there was one thing she hated it was letting her emotions get the better of her. ‘That is what comes of dwelling on memories of my own Season.’

‘They do not look as though they were very happy memories,’ Rose observed.

Lydia grimaced. ‘They were not.’

Rose sighed and glanced up at her half-brother, who was standing behind their chairs, glowering at the entire assembly.

‘Was it worse than this?’

‘Oh, Rose, are you not enjoying yourself?’

‘How can I,’ she muttered mutinously, ‘when Robert is being so impossible?’

Since the orchestra was going at full pelt and they were muttering to each other behind their fans, Lydia did not think Robert would overhear, even though she suspected Rose half-hoped he would.

‘I am sure he is only trying to be protective…’

‘Well, I wish he wouldn’t. I don’t see why he would not let me dance with Lord Abergele.’

Nor had Lydia, not really. Though since she’d got into the habit of playing peacemaker between the siblings, she said, ‘I expect he had his reasons…’

Rose turned to her, muttering crossly, ‘He probably thinks he is just a fortune hunter.’

‘Oh? Well, then…’

‘But I don’t care! It’s not as if I have come to town to get a husband, only to find my feet in society. And how am I ever going to do that if he will keep every man who shows an interest in me at arm’s length? Lord Abergele has a sister, who has the kind of connections that would be most useful. Now that he’s offended the brother, I have no hope of making a friend of her either.’

And what was worse, now that he’d turned down a perfectly respectable dance partner on her behalf, Rose couldn’t dance with anyone else this evening.

‘I will have a word with him,’ said Lydia. Not that it would do much good. He was far too much like his father, firmly believing he knew best, and expecting his family to fall in with his wishes without question.

And, yes, she conceded that it must be particularly hard for him to listen to her opinion, because she was four years younger than him. She could understand why he’d taken to treating her as though she was another of his younger sisters, rather than with the respect he should have accorded a stepmama, but it didn’t make it any less annoying.

Particularly when he stood over them both, as he was doing tonight, like some kind of guard dog, his hackles rising when anyone he considered unsuitable came anywhere near his beautiful sister. Signalling to the entire world that he did not quite trust her to keep Rose safe.

At the exact moment she firmed her lips with pique, and flicked her fan shut, the line of gentlemen stepped forwards in unison, and Hemingford’s eyes lit on her, briefly.

He did not smile this time, either, but he did grant her a slight nod of his head.

So he’d finally dredged up a memory that hadn’t troubled him for years, had he?

Or perhaps he had recognised her before, but it had been his guilty conscience that made his eyes slide away from her. Just as he’d slid out of the room, and out of her life, after uttering the statement he’d so clearly regretted the moment it had left his lips.

‘Oh, he does remember you after all.’

Rose was looking, not at him, but at her, with a perplexed expression. And she realised she was trembling. She’d become so angry at the casual way he’d broken her heart that she was physically quivering with it.

What was happening to her? For years she’d managed to preserve an outward semblance of serenity no matter what she’d been thinking. In fact, the last time she’d got so worked up she couldn’t control her physical reaction had been her wedding day.

Her knees had been shaking so badly she’d started to worry she might not make it all the way down the aisle. But even so, she’d managed to lift her chin and force a smile to her lips, determined that nobody should guess how scared she was. Particularly not her husband. Colonel Morgan had frowned when he’d taken her hand to slip the ring on her finger, feeling her tremors. He hadn’t liked the notion she might be afraid of him, of what she’d agreed to. So as she’d spoken her vows, she’d made secret ones of her own. That she was never, ever, going to let her feelings get the better of her again. She would keep a mask of calm acceptance firmly in place at all times.

And until tonight, she’d been able to do so.

Before she could pull herself together sufficiently to form some plausible excuse, Robert leaned down and growled into her ear, ‘I quite forgot that you knew him.’

Oh, lord, that was all she needed. Now she was going to have to convince Robert, too, that he had merely been an acquaintance. If he should guess she had been in love with him, and was, to judge by her remarkable reactions just now, still far too susceptible to him, he would no doubt redouble his guard-doggy role towards her, as well as Rose. It was bad enough that he was already undermining her role as chaperon, with his heavyhanded vetting of all Rose’s potential admirers. She simply could not hand him the opportunity to accuse her of setting a bad example for Rose to follow. That would be the end of ever getting him to listen to her point of view.

In an automatic gesture of self-defence, she parried his query with a thrust of her own.

‘You have a short memory, then. It was he who introduced you to me, in the first place. Do you not recall? He brought me to one of those picnics you used to hold at Westdene.’

‘But I thought you said you only danced with him once or twice,’ put in Rose.

‘Did I?’ She had to wave her fan quite swiftly to cool the heat that rushed to her cheeks. ‘Well, it hardly amounted to much more than that, really.’

Although he had been what her chaperon described as ‘particular in his attentions,’ after that first dance. They’d both been surprised by the number of times he’d called upon her, and sought her out as a dance partner, even though she’d blushed and stumbled her way inelegantly through set after set of country dances. He had not been put off by her stammer, or her apparent stupidity, not like the other men who’d shown an initial interest in her. If anything, he had redoubled his efforts to put her at ease. And gradually, she’d found herself unfurling in his company.

To the extent that one afternoon, as they’d been walking in the park, she’d let slip that she couldn’t understand why he bothered with her.

‘If that is a hint you wish me to leave you be,’ he’d warned her with mock severity, ‘then you are going to have to stop looking so pleased when I come to call.’

She’d blushed harder and studied her feet for several paces, before plucking up the courage to answer.

‘I d-do not want you to leave me be. I-I like your company.’

‘That is just as well,’ he said cheerfully, ‘because I have no intention of leaving you be until I have coaxed one genuine smile from your lips.’

‘B-but, why? I m-mean, what can it m-matter to you? M-Mrs Westerly s-says you aren’t interested in m-m—’

‘No! Do not say that word in my presence,’ he’d cried in mock horror. ‘There is more to life than…’ he’d looked round as though checking to see if anyone might overhear, before bending to whisper in her ear ‘…matrimony. We can enjoy a walk in the park on a sunny afternoon, or a dance together, just for its own sake, can we not?’

‘The sun is not shining today,’ she had remarked with sinking spirits, as they’d halted in front of a patch of equally depressed-looking daffodils which were straining their golden trumpets in the direction the sun would have been shining from, had it been able to penetrate the heavy layers of cloud. In spite of Mrs Westerly warning her not to read too much into the way he’d taken her up, her foolish heart had dared to think that perhaps he was not such a lost cause as everyone thought.

‘But we can still enjoy each other’s company, can we not,’ he’d said, ‘without expecting it to lead to wedding bells?’

She associated the scent of daffodils with the death of her romantic hopes to this very day.

‘We can,’ she’d said, forcing a smile to her lips, though she had not been able to look up into his face. If a light friendship was all he was prepared to offer, she would do nothing to scare him off, for sharing the occasional few minutes with this wickedly witty and dashingly handsome young man had become the only bright spot in her otherwise gloomy existence.

‘B-besides, everyone knows you aren’t in the market for a wife. And even if you were, you wouldn’t look twice at someone like me. You know I have no dowry, I suppose?’

‘Of course I do. The tabbies make sure everyone knows every newcomer’s net worth within five minutes of their entering any ballroom. It makes no difference to how I feel about you.’

Well, it wouldn’t since he didn’t see her as a potential wife.

‘And yet,’ he’d said, tucking her arm into his and setting out along the path again, ‘you still… light up whenever I ask you to dance.’

‘Well, you do dance divinely,’ she’d admitted. ‘And Mrs Westerly says—’ She’d broken off, biting down on her lower lip.

‘Go on. Tell me what Mrs Westerly says. I promise that however bad it may be, it won’t surprise me. Chaperons normally give their charges dire warnings about me.’

‘Well, she says that it is no bad thing to spend time with you, because you make me smile. Which makes me look more attractive to eligible men.’

‘Aha! So that is why she doesn’t forbid me to pollute her drawing room with my presence.’

She’d nodded, lulled into a sense of…something almost like companionship as they’d strolled along, arm in arm. Which could be the only thing to account for her blurting, ‘Not that it does any good, in the long term. Because the moment I try to talk to anyone eligible, I start blushing and stammering so much they take me for a perfect ninny. And if there is one thing a man does not want, that is to take a ninny to wife. Not unless she is a great heiress, or has a very grand title.’

At that point, Nicholas had given her a quizzical look and observed, ‘But today you have stopped stammering altogether.’

‘Why, yes, so I have.’

‘It is because you aren’t striving to impress me. You know I am completely ineligible.’

Was that what it had been? Or was it just that she’d finally given up all hope of anything more than friendship?

‘I dare say your chaperon has warned you,’ he’d said airily, ‘that there is a good deal of bad blood in my family. The first Rothersthorpe was little better than a pirate, you know, although Good Queen Bess rewarded him for his efforts against the Spanish with the title.’

‘Oh, yes. Everyone knows that. But what she primarily objects to is…your lack of money. Mrs Westerly warned me that is why you invite me to go for walks with you, rather than taking me for a drive around the park.’

‘Did she? The old b—besom,’ he’d said. ‘Though of course it’s true. I haven’t a feather to fly with.’

‘Perhaps,’ she’d said with just a touch of asperity, ‘if you did not place wagers on such ridiculous things…’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, I did hear there was one between a goose and a mouse.’

He’d let out a surprised bark of laughter. ‘Who told you about that? Not that it isn’t true. But at least I backed the mouse. Won a packet,’ he’d finished smugly.

‘And on what did you subsequently lose that packet?’ she’d snapped. ‘The turn of a card?’

‘No! I am an extremely proficient card player,’ he’d said, raising his chin just a little, which showed she’d touched him on the raw. But after only a few leisurely paces, his lips curving into a smile, he’d darted her a look of pure mischief and confessed, ‘It was a horse.’

She’d pursed her lips.

‘You are right,’ he’d sighed, in mock despair. ‘I am incorrigible. Money flows through my hands like water. Cannot keep a hold on it for longer than five minutes. And yet,’ he’d said, giving her a quizzical look, ‘you never appear to think that coming for walks with me is a waste of time. Even when there are no potential suitors about to witness you smiling and managing to string whole sentences together without stammering.’

Her heart had thundered so hard in her chest it had been almost painful. If he guessed how she truly felt, would he take fright, and disappear from her life?

But even so, she’d found herself blurting, ‘You make me laugh when sometimes I think there is nothing left to so much as smile about.’

For a moment it had almost overwhelmed her. All of it. She’d had to lower her head and press her lips together to stop them trembling, and blink rapidly to disperse the burgeoning tears.

He’d patted her hand and said, ‘I shall consider it my duty to make you smile, then, whenever our paths cross.’

He already did that. Whenever she was dancing with him, or taking supper, or walking along like this, with her hand on his arm, gazing up into his laughing blue eyes, it was as though the sun had broken through the dark clouds that habitually hung over her.

But then he’d brought those clouds rolling back, by adding, ‘Life is too short to ruin it by worrying about what might or might not happen, Miss Franklin. We should just enjoy each day we are given and let the future take care of itself.’

And she’d had to bite back a sharp retort. It was all very well for him to say such things. He had no idea! He had a roof over his head. A regular allowance—even if he did complain it was a beggarly amount. A secure place in society, because of his rank.

And, most importantly, he did not have to marry, not unless he really, really wanted to.

Was he married now?

She watched him smile down at the plump girl as they went into a right-handed star.

She had no idea. She’d deliberately avoided finding out anything about him since she’d married Colonel Morgan. Things had been difficult enough. If she’d read the announcement of his betrothal to some other woman, and known that she’d managed to impress him enough to renounce his hedonistic lifestyle, she would have wanted to curl up and die.

Which would not have been fair to her husband. To whom she owed so much.

No—to repay all Colonel Morgan’s generosity by breaking her heart over another man—that would have been unforgivable.

‘So…he is a friend of yours then, Robert?’ Rose was looking from her to her brother, a perplexed frown creasing her brow.

‘Not any longer,’ Robert growled. ‘I did not mention it, but…’ He shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well, if you must know, we had a bit of a falling out. I have not spoken to Rothersthorpe since a short while after you married our father,’ he said to Lydia, though it was Rose who was questioning him. ‘I did not tell you about it, because, well, because…’

Rothersthorpe?

He’d come into his father’s title, then. Her insides hollowed out at the thought they’d drifted so far apart she did not even know that much about his life.

Though it had been what she’d wanted.

It had.

‘But Mama Lyddy called him Mr Humming… something.’

‘Hemingford,’ Robert corrected her. ‘That is his family name. Now that his father has died, he has of course inherited the title. He is Viscount Rothersthorpe now. I would have thought you would have known that, Mama Lyddy.’

‘No.’ She’d taken such pains to avoid seeing his name in the Weekly Messenger that she had missed even that.

When you made your bed, you had to lie in it. And it had been hard enough to accustom herself to Colonel Morgan as a husband as it was. Letting anyone suspect she had married one man, whilst mourning the inconstancy of another, would have done nobody any good.

And it would do nobody any good to so much as hint at the truth now, either.

‘Heavens, Robert, surely you know I have never been one to pore over the society news? I left that world behind when I married your father.’

‘But you have been talking about him,’ Robert persisted. ‘Neither of you can take your eyes off him.’

Oh dear. He was not going to let it drop. Now he was like a guard dog with a bone.

‘I was trying to warn Rose to be on her guard. I don’t want her taken in by his handsome face and superficial charm.’

He gave her one of those penetrating looks that put her so very much in mind of his father. He had the same steely-grey eyes, the same hooked nose and eyebrows that could only be described as formidable. Of all Colonel Morgan’s children, he was the one who resembled him, in looks at least, the most.

He reminded her of him all the more when he looked down that beak of a nose and said, ‘You need not worry. I am more than capable of protecting her from undesirables.’

Both Lydia and Rose turned their backs on him, snapped open their fans and began to ply them vigorously.

Men! They were all so…impossible!

Especially the handsome charmers like Rothersthorpe, as she must think of him nowadays. Because, even though she was angry with him, she was still achingly aware of exactly where he was, at any given moment.

She refused to look at him, yet she knew when he returned the plump young lady to her chaperon. And she sensed him turn and begin to saunter straight across the room to where they were sitting.

Her heart skipped a beat when she realised he was coming straight towards her.

That he was going to speak to her.

Well, his first words had better be an apology for letting her down, just when she’d needed him the most.

He came to a halt not three feet before her chair, a sardonic smile hovering about his lips.

And it took all her will-power not to get up and slap it right off his face. She had to remind herself, quite sternly, that this was a public ballroom and she must not cause a scene that would rebound on Rose.

She took a deep breath and snapped her fan shut.

She could be polite and dignified. She could, even though her heart was pounding, her mouth had gone dry and her knees were trembling.

She wasn’t an impressionable eighteen-yearold any longer, but a mature woman, and she refused to blush and stammer, or go weak at the knees, just because a handsome man was deigning to pay her a little attention.

Chapter Two

‘Good to see you, Morgan,’ said Rothersthorpe, his gaze sliding right past her as if she was not there.

After a moment’s struggle, she acknowledged that it was probably just as well he had not spoken to her first. Apart from the fact that it wasn’t the done thing, she still wasn’t fully in control of her temper. Only think how dreadful it would be if he’d said, ‘Good evening, Lydia’, as though nothing was wrong, and she’d let all this bottledup hurt and anger burst forth like a cork flying from a shaken bottle.

As it was, she felt Robert’s hand go to the back of her chair. And when she turned to look up at him, she saw her stepson glaring at him too. He’d placed his other hand on the back of Rose’s chair and taken up such an aggressive posture that not even Rothersthorpe could fail to read the warning signs.

Oh, no. It looked as though there was going to be some kind of scene after all.

But at least it would not be of her making.

Not that Lord Rothersthorpe looked in the least bit daunted.

‘It has been a long time,’ he persisted. ‘Too long,’ he said with a rueful smile and thrust out his hand.

Lydia’s heart thundered in her breast while Robert stood quite still, looking at that outstretched hand. It was only when Robert finally took it, saying, ‘Yes, yes, it has’, that she realised she had been holding her breath. It slid from her in a wave of guilty disappointment. She hadn’t wanted Rose’s evening ruined by a scene, she really hadn’t. But a part of her would still very much have liked to see Rothersthorpe flattened by her stepson’s deadly right hook.

‘I cannot believe our paths have not crossed in all this time,’ Robert was saying as though he truly liked Rothersthorpe. When she’d been relying on him to dismiss him, the way he’d dismissed one penniless peer after another, during the few weeks Rose had been attending balls.

‘I do not spend much time in town these days,’ replied Lord Rothersthorpe. ‘And when I do come up, it is not to attend events such as this.’ He looked around the glittering ballroom with what, on another man’s face, she would have described as a sneer.

‘I have made a point of avoiding the company of most of the set I ran with at one time,’ he drawled. ‘A man has to develop standards at some point in his life.’

Standards? He had always laughed at people who claimed to have standards.

What on earth could have happened to make him sneer at his younger self?

And now that he was standing so close, she could see that there were subtle changes to his appearance which she had not noticed from a distance. Time had, of course, etched lines on his face. But they were not the ones she might have expected. Instead of seeing creases fanning out from his eyes, as though he laughed long and often, there were grooves bracketing his mouth, which made him look both hard and sober.

‘So, the rumours about you,’ said Robert, ‘are all true, then? You have reformed?’

Lord Rothersthorpe smiled. In one way, it did remind her of the way he’d used to smile, for one corner of his mouth tilted upwards more than the other. But although he’d moved his mouth in the exact same way, it was somehow as though he was merely going through the motions.

‘Not entirely,’ he said. ‘I still enjoy the company of pretty young ladies.’ He looked down at Rose in a way that made Lydia’s hackles rise. Had there been just the tiniest stress on the word young? And where had all his charm disappeared to? When she’d been a girl and Nicholas Hemingford had spoken such words, she would have defied any girl it was aimed at not to have melted right off her chair.

But this man, Lord Rothersthorpe, well, she couldn’t quite explain why, but he did not sound charming at all.

And when he said, ‘Will you not introduce me to your lovely companion?’ the expression on his face put Lydia in mind of a…of a…well, yes, of a pirate intent on plunder.

Her fear crystallised when Rose smiled back up at him, for Rose did not appear to find anything about him the least bit sinister. But then what girl, fresh from her schoolroom, could fail to be anything but fascinated when he turned those smiling blue eyes upon her so intently?

A painful sensation struck her midriff. Rose was as deaf to warnings as she’d been herself at that age. She couldn’t see the danger. And nor, apparently, could Robert, because he was performing the introduction.

‘This is my half-sister, Miss Rose Morgan,’ said Robert. ‘It is entirely on her account we have all uprooted ourselves and come to town this spring.’

‘Enchanted,’ said Rothersthorpe, bowing low over her hand. ‘London society will be all the better for having such a beauty adorn its ballrooms.’

‘And this is my stepmother, Mrs Morgan,’ continued Robert, while Lord Rothersthorpe continued to gaze at Rose. ‘Though, of course, you already know her.’

Rothersthorpe turned his head. The expression of admiration which he’d bestowed upon Rose vanished without trace.

‘I would hardly claim to know her,’ he replied, making her a curt bow. ‘Our paths crossed, briefly, almost a decade ago. I seem to recall that you came to town for the sole purpose of catching a husband?’

There was a distinct note of accusation in his voice, which was monstrously unfair. She could have snatched at those rambling words and held him to account for them. Instead, when he’d made it so obvious he regretted them the moment they’d left his lips, she’d let him escape.

‘You know very well that I did,’ she therefore replied. In fact, she’d told him quite plainly that if she didn’t find a husband before the end of the Season she was going to be in a pickle. And he’d brushed her concerns aside by making a jest about things never being so bad as you feared when the time came to face them.

‘And since,’ he said with a hard smile, ‘in those days, I was virtually penniless, that naturally meant you did not waste much of your time upon me.’

It had not been like that. Why was he twisting it to make it sound as though she’d been in the wrong?

‘Not when you made it so very clear that you did not wish to get married, my lord,’ she retorted, confusion temporarily diluting her annoyance. ‘No woman with an ounce of self-respect would wish to be accused of setting her cap at a man so clearly averse to the notion of getting leg-shackled.’

‘Touché.’ He raised his hands to acknowledge the hit. ‘It is true to say I was young and enjoying my freedom far too much to sacrifice it. However, now,’ he said, turning his attention back to Rose once more, his expression softening, ‘I have matured to the point where the prospect of matrimony no longer terrifies me. On the contrary, now that I am a respectable man of means, marrying is not only the next logical step for me to take, but one which I find most desirable.’

Lydia felt as though he’d slapped her. The prospect of marriage back then had terrified him. She’d seen it on his face, understood it from the way he’d vanished without trace after uttering what she might have interpreted as a proposal, if she hadn’t known him better.

Mrs Westerly’s words rang in her ears, for the second time that night. ‘You mark my words, when the time comes, he will marry an heiress…’

An heiress. She looked at the predatory way he was examining Rose. Rose, who was not only incredibly wealthy, but extremely pretty too.

Had it been only this evening, before setting out, that she’d decided she’d never been in better looks? Oh, she’d dismissed Rose’s comment that she looked like a fairy princess as the nonsense it was. She was too curvaceous nowadays to warrant that description. Not that she minded. She’d been positively scrawny when she’d been Rose’s age. Worn down by cares that the Colonel had lifted from her shoulders. From the moment she’d married him, her health had begun to improve. And bearing and feeding a child had even bequeathed her a bosom of which she was positively proud.

She was better at picking out clothing that suited her, too. The pastels Mrs Westerly had told her to wear for her own début had always made her look completely washed out. Whiteblonde hair, greyish-blue eyes and milk-white skin could really make a girl look, according to the acid-tongued reigning beauty that year, like a streak of pump water.

So she’d been pleased with the ensemble she was wearing tonight. The rich blue of her underskirt brought out the colour in her eyes, though it was the gauzy overskirt, sprinkled with spangles, that had caused Rose to make the comment about fairy princesses. She’d even decided not to worry that the neckline was a touch too daring, that there was nothing wrong with revealing what she now regarded as her best feature. Besides, the pearls that nestled between her generous breasts had always boosted her confidence. Colonel Morgan had given them to her on her wedding day, telling her she was a pearl beyond price. If he’d only said it on that occasion, she might have dismissed the words as idle flattery. But he’d kept on saying it, right up to the day he’d died. Even when he’d taken to giving her diamonds, these pearls remained her favourite. Because they made her feel…valued.

But now she felt as though she’d become invisible because Lord Rothersthorpe had eyes only for Rose.

‘But I am being remiss,’ he said, turning towards her with an obvious effort. ‘I really ought to offer my condolences on your loss. Although…’ he paused, his eyes scanning her outfit slowly, before returning to her face ‘…you are so clearly out of mourning that I wonder if it is indelicate of me to remind you of Colonel Morgan’s demise at all.’

It felt just as though he’d honed sarcasm into a sharp blade and thrust it between her ribs. The others might have missed it, but she’d seen the barely concealed contempt with which he’d assessed the finery with which she’d been so pleased, not half an hour since. And it all became too much.

‘Do you think I ought to go about in blacks for ever?’ She felt Rose flinch, though she was too angry to tear her gaze from Lord Rothersthorpe’s sardonic eyes.

‘And if it was indelicate to remind me of my husband’s demise,’ she continued, in spite of Robert clamping the hand that had rested on the back of her chair firmly on her shoulder, ‘why did you do just that?’

‘Naturally,’ put in Robert, while Lydia was floundering under the horrible feeling that Lord Rothersthorpe was deliberately trying to hurt her, ‘we had to delay Rose’s come-out until we were out of full mourning.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Lord Rothersthorpe said mechanically, ‘if I have caused any offence.’

But he didn’t look the least bit sorry. On the contrary, she’d seen a flare of something like satisfaction flicker through his eyes when he’d goaded her into lashing out at him. And just to prove how insincere his apology to her had been, when he turned to Rose, his face showed nothing but compassion. ‘The death of a parent is always a difficult milestone in one’s life.’

A parent, but not a husband, was what he meant.

‘I trust it would not be inappropriate for me to ask if you would care to dance? Is it too soon for you to think of it?’

‘Not at all,’ said Rose, leaping to her feet.

‘Oh, but, Rose,’ said Lydia, ‘you really ought not…’

Lord Rothersthorpe turned to her and smiled. Mockingly.

‘If you remember me at all, Mrs Morgan, surely you recall that I never pay the slightest attention to anything a girl’s chaperon might have to say?’

Oh, but that twisted the knife in the wound he’d already inflicted. To refer to her as a chaperon…

She knew his opinions of chaperons, all too well. He’d never had a good word to say about any of them and now he was calling her one, to her face.

And it was no good reminding herself that a chaperon was exactly what she was. She knew what he meant.

Her eyes stung as the last vestige of hope that she might ever have meant anything to him at all curled up and blackened, like a sheet of paper tossed on to an open flame.

‘Rose,’ said Robert sharply, ‘you cannot dance. You know you cannot.’

‘I know no such thing,’ she retorted. ‘My brother has some dreadfully stuffy notions about the suitability of dance partners,’ she said to Lord Rothersthorpe. ‘If he had his way, I would never dance with anyone. But he cannot object to you, since you are clearly a good friend of his.’

‘That is not the reason for my objection and you know it,’ growled Robert. ‘Lord Rothersthorpe, I hope you will forgive my sister for being so outspoken—’

‘Of course,’ he cut in smoothly. ‘It is far better than blushing and stammering out some nonsense, like so many of the débutantes one comes across.’

Lydia flinched. It was as though he was deliberately distancing himself from all he’d once claimed to find appealing about her.

The only good thing to come of her reaction was the fact that Rose noticed it. Her eyes flicked from Lydia to Lord Rothersthorpe, and for a moment, she looked as though she was regretting her defiant outburst.

But then Robert, fatally, said, ‘Rose, I am warning you…’

At which she stiffened her spine, shot her brother a rebellious look and laid her arm on Lord Rothersthorpe’s sleeve.

Short of leaping over the chairs, and forcing her back into her seat, there was nothing Robert could do.

With one last hard smile, Lord Rothersthorpe bore Rose away with him.

And Lydia felt as though a chasm had opened up inside her. A cold, aching void, into which all her cherished memories of this man tumbled. And shattered.

Lord Rothersthorpe hadn’t known he had it in him to dissemble so convincingly. He hadn’t known he could smile and perform all the steps of the dance in the correct sequence, and even flirt with his partner as though he was enjoying himself, when his gut was roiling with acid rancour.

But then, a gentleman simply couldn’t give way to the savagery that had welled up in him when he’d seen Lydia sitting there draped in the silks and satins she’d got from marrying that disgusting old man. A gentleman couldn’t walk up to a woman he had not seen for eight years and twist on the obscenely opulent ropes of pearls she had round her neck until they choked her.

Especially since no jury in the land would believe he had any reasonable excuse for feeling so murderous, if there was such a thing as a reasonable excuse for committing murder.

But then what man would feel reasonable when a woman betrayed him by marrying another man without even having the decency to reject his proposal first?

And not just any man, but one old enough to have been her father?

He snorted in disgust, causing Miss Morgan to raise her brows in surprise.

‘Slight cold,’ he excused himself. ‘Beg pardon.’

Father? Grandfather, more like. Much-married grandfather, too, according to Robert when he’d broken the news. ‘He’s already worn out three women with his filthy temper and his unreasonable demands,’ Robert had slurred, his voice thick with alcohol and revulsion. ‘Each of them younger and more unsuitable than the last. Can you imagine how I feel,’ he’d said, downing yet another glass of brandy in one gulp, ‘having to call a chit of a girl, scarce out of the schoolroom, “Mother”?’

He hadn’t cared a jot what Robert thought about having a stepmother who was younger than he was. It wasn’t as if they’d ever been close friends. They’d fallen in with each other because they were much of an age and enjoyed the same pastimes, that was all. Besides, he was having too much trouble coping with the sensation of having been punched, hard, in the gut.

Lydia, married?

‘She cannot have married him,’ he’d just about managed to gasp. ‘She wouldn’t.’ Fearing he might actually be going to cast up his accounts as he imagined her giving herself willingly to that stick-thin, papery-skinned old man he’d glimpsed striding about the grounds on the fateful day he’d taken her to the picnic Robert had thrown at Westdene, he’d shakily reached for the brandy decanter himself. ‘I only took her there two weeks ago. And I…’ asked her to think about marrying him.

‘Well, we’re not talking about a love match, are we?’ Robert had splashed a measure of brandy into a glass and passed it to him, when his own hands had failed to accomplish the task himself. ‘My father likes young women. The younger the better, apparently. And he’s so rich that he has no trouble getting them to marry him.’

The words had eaten into him like acid scoring into a printer’s plate.

This was her answer, then. The Colonel had money and he didn’t, that was what it boiled down to. She was just like all the rest.

Though at least all those eligible débutantes who’d turned their pretty noses up at him because of his reputation, and the state of his finances, had been honest. Only Lydia had fooled him into dropping his guard. Into making him…hope.

‘If your reaction means what I think it does,’ Robert had said, looking at him with such concern he knew he must have turned white, ‘then let me tell you, my friend, you’ve had a lucky escape. She’s obviously mercenary to the core. God, but I pity my sisters, having that harpy foisted on them.’

The remainder of that encounter had vanished into the red mist that had risen up and swamped him. He knew he’d said some pretty harsh things about elderly men preying on females barely out of the schoolroom, but he could not recall which of them had thrown the first punch.

It could well have been Robert. A man can say what he likes about his own parent, but he won’t tolerate hearing it from another’s lips.

Family was family, after all.

Which brought him neatly back to this darkhaired, wilful beauty, with whom he was dancing right now. One of Robert’s half-sisters from one of those wives Colonel Morgan had worn out with his unreasonable demands and filthy temper while he’d been clawing his way up the rungs of the Company army ladder. Not his first, or she would be Robert’s full sister. But did it really matter which of them it was? All that concerned him was that Lydia had been his fourth wife. He ground his teeth. His fourth.

Of course, he’d known Lydia had come to town to find herself a husband. It was why they all came, year after year, all these well-bred girls in their uniform white dresses. But he’d started to think she shrank from the prospect. He’d seen the way that dragon of a chaperon was always breathing down her neck, and how the longer the Season went on, the more she’d wilted under the constant pressure to bring some man up to scratch.

She’d started to look so fragile she’d put him in mind of a dandelion clock. All that silvery-haired trembling beauty, being held together only by a tremendous effort of will. One hard knock was all it would take to scatter her to the four winds.

Or so he’d thought.

He snorted again. When he thought of how hard she’d made him work to get her to speak without stammering and blushing…or when he recalled the sense of triumph she’d aroused when she’d shyly confided that he could take her mind off her woes just by being there…or worse—that surge of protectiveness that had swept through him that day when she’d just about fainted, and he’d caught her in his arms, and carried her into the house.

‘God, how I wish I had the right to take you away from that dragon,’ he’d bitten out as she’d turned her face into his chest with a moan. ‘I would never force you to do anything you didn’t want,’ he’d said, wishing he could drop a kiss into the curls that had been tickling his chin. ‘You’re so delicate,’ he’d said, ‘you should have someone to look after you. I wish it could be me.’

And before he’d gone three more paces, he’d loved the way she felt in his arms so much he’d found himself casting caution to the winds.

‘And why shouldn’t it be me? I’ve got to get married some day. I’ve got a duty to my family to preserve the name, if nothing else. And you know, I don’t think it would be such a dreadful chore, if it was to a girl like you. You make me feel as though I’m worth something, even though I haven’t two brass farthings to rub together.’

She hadn’t said a word in reply. She hadn’t thrown her arms round his neck and said that marrying him would make her the happiest girl on earth. Even though he knew she was determined to marry someone. She’d confided in him, just the once, that she dreaded what would happen if it came to the end of the Season without her getting even one proposal.

So the look on her face, as he’d lain her down on the sofa, had filled him with foreboding.

It could have been the result of the headache that had felled her, of course, but he’d been so worried she was about to frame the words of refusal that he’d cut her short.

‘Don’t say a word,’ he’d said, backing away hastily. He could see he was going to have to prove he could support her, even if it wasn’t in very much style. He’d noticed that his rather cavalier attitude towards paying bills had perturbed her. And she’d expressed open disapproval of his tendency to make rather reckless wagers. He was going to have to prove that for once in his life he was in deadly earnest. In short, he was going to have to raise enough money to at least pay for a ring, and a licence, and the vicar. ‘Just think about it,’ he’d said as he backed out of the room.

He’d thought she would at least have done that, while he was off fleecing every drunk too crosseyed to see what cards he held in his hands. But no. By the time Robert caught up with him at Newmarket, she’d already worked her wiles on that…jumped-up clerk! She’d coldly, ruthlessly assessed what the Colonel could give her and then…sold herself to him without a qualm. She must have a core of steel to have survived marriage to a man who had gone out to India with nothing but the clothes he’d stood up in, and burning ambition, but who’d returned to England with wealth beyond most men’s wildest dreams.

And nobody was ever going to convince him that a man could amass such a fortune, so quickly, by honest means.

‘I beg your pardon?’

Rose Morgan was giving him an odd look. ‘What was that you said?’

It was only then he realised he’d been getting so worked up he’d begun muttering under his breath.

‘I’m thinking of a poem,’ he came back smoothly. ‘Something along the lines of…Your beauty surpasses my wildest dreams, I mean to have you by any means…’

Miss Morgan giggled and blushed. ‘You really should not repeat that kind of verse to me. If Robert ever found out, he would be simply furious.’

But she did not look displeased. She simpered and looked up at him from under those long, dark lashes of hers, with just the hint of a smile hovering round her lips.

Had Lydia coached her to look at men like that? Miss Morgan must definitely have practised often, to have perfected a look that conveyed so neatly both maidenly modesty, spiced with a clear dash of willingness to accept his suit, should he choose to further her acquaintance.

Well, if anyone knew how to get her young charge to bag herself a husband, no matter what obstacles society’s high sticklers might throw in her way, Lydia was the woman. Lydia had not appeared to have anything going for her when she’d come to town for her own Season. Not only had she been of a naturally timid disposition—or so he’d thought—but she’d also lacked the means to make the most of what assets she had. He had sometimes overheard other girls mocking her for having no more than two evening dresses, which she’d made over, in various ways, time after time. He had not minded. On the contrary, he’d admired her ingenuity, for he knew what it was like to always be juggling his own finances.

But she’d clearly minded more than he’d guessed. She’d been determined to marry money, no matter what kind of man would provide it for her. And being wealthy certainly looked as though it had suited her. Just look at her, sitting on the chaperons’ bench, fanning herself indolently while she watched Rose dancing with, he made no bones about admitting, just about the most eligible bachelor in the room.

Yes, she’d positively thrived on having married money. There was a sleek, contented look about her, like a cat that had been at the cream. He had always known she had the potential to become a beauty, but she’d had to paint on a facsimile of the roses that bloomed naturally in her cheeks now. She’d entirely lost those gauche mannerisms that had so appealed to him, too. And her gawky, coltish figure was now hidden beneath distinctly feminine curves.

She was no longer that frail, pale waif, who’d made him feel she needed some big strong man to come dashing to her rescue. The girl who’d so cunningly made him feel as though he could be that man. She was a self-assured, healthy, wealthy widow. A woman who’d got exactly what she’d set out to achieve in life.

In fact, to her way of thinking Colonel Morgan’s age might have been a positive advantage. She certainly had not had to put up with his filthy temper or his unreasonable demands for very long. She’d been a widow now for almost two years.

‘Typical,’ he muttered. The very year he’d finally decided that he was ready to dip his toe into matrimonial waters, some malign fate had brought her up to town as well.

Dammit, how could he search for a bride, when the mere sight of her provoked him so much that he’d started muttering imprecations under his breath while he was dancing with just about the prettiest girl in the room? He’d thought he’d got over his disillusion. His disappointment. His mistrust of everything a woman said. But then he’d seen her sitting there, pretending she had not seen him. Or worse, she simply hadn’t recognised him. The thought he might have been such an insignificant feature of her life that she did not even remember him had made him so boiling mad, he’d had to march across the ballroom and challenge her. Hurt her. And the only way he could think of to do it was to make her think he was only interested in her stepdaughter—when nothing could be further from the truth. He’d scarcely been aware of her, throughout this entire set.

Damn her, but Lydia had even ruined this for him, too. He’d used to enjoy dancing for its own sake. What could be more pleasant than indulging in vigorous exercise alongside an appreciative female? And then being able to return her to her seat, and walk away, and select another one, without risk of censure?

But he was not enjoying dancing with Rose Morgan. Not with his head full of Lydia. Not knowing that the moment would come when he would have to return the girl to her seat and stand within strangling distance of her all-too-alluring stepmother once more. And make polite conversation, when what he wanted was to demand an explanation.

It was hard to know whether he was angrier with her for being here, or himself for reacting to her in such an illogical, irrational…uncontrollable way.

His face set, he steeled himself to escort Rose across the floor. Why the hell should he let her make him feel in the least bit uncomfortable? He had as much right to be here as she did. More. He belonged in society, had been born to a position of rank and privilege. And what was more, he’d really made something of himself. People no longer assumed he would never amount to anything, because of the family he’d come from. They’d seen him turn his fortunes around by dint of hard work and resourcefulness. He’d become famous for being the first Hemingford for generations who hadn’t resorted to charming an heiress into marriage to pull the family out of debt. He’d come back to town knowing that, at last, he could marry any woman he damn well chose.

And he was not going to let her return to society spoil his plans.

‘This is all your fault,’ Lydia had said to Robert, as Rothersthorpe led Rose on to the dance floor. ‘You might have known that being so strict with her would drive her to some act of rebellion.’

‘Well, I don’t regret sending Lord Abergele to the rightabout,’ he retorted. ‘Not when everyone knows his pockets are to let.’

‘What does that have to say to anything? Rose has no intention of marrying the first man she dances with. She has come to town to find her feet socially and enjoy herself. She was the very first one to declare she would not think her Season a disaster if she did not find a man who truly loved her, whom she could love in return. She knows it won’t be easy to find a man like that, on just one trip to town. But you are making it impossible. How is she going to get to know any man well enough to know if she could possibly fall in love with him, if you won’t let any of them get anywhere near her?’

She’d never raised her voice to him before and he clearly didn’t know how to take it.

‘I’m only trying to protect her,’ he protested, looking for all the world like a man who had gone to pick an apple and accidentally put his hand in a wasp’s nest. ‘She is so innocent…’

‘But she is not a fool. You should let her associate with all sorts of men, Robert, and let her judge for herself. Do you really think she is the sort to be taken in by a handsome face and a lot of flummery?’

‘You never know.’ He sighed. ‘You hear about it all the time. And Rose is not only extremely wealthy, but extraordinarily pretty, too.’

He pulled out the chair behind which he was standing, so that he could squeeze through, and sit next to Lydia.

‘The only danger, so far as I can see,’ she said, ‘comes from you keeping her on too tight a leash. I wouldn’t put it past her to start a flirtation with the most unsuitable man she can find just to teach you a lesson.’ She looked pointedly at Rose as she skipped down the set with a hard-faced Lord Rothersthorpe.

‘I suppose it could have been worse.’ Robert sighed. ‘If she had to choose someone to be her rebellion, then at least it is a man to whom I cannot object for himself.’

‘I should have thought he was exactly the sort of man you would object to. You have been at pains to shield Rose from so very many other penniless peers.’

Robert shot her a quick frown. ‘Rothersthorpe is not penniless. I won’t say that he’s wealthy, exactly, but he has prospects.’

‘Prospects? What do you mean, prospects?’

‘Well, it is some kind of uncle, or cousin, or something. I’m not sure of the exact details. But it is well known that some elderly bachelor related to him has decided to make him his heir, since he has no other. Rothersthorpe stands to inherit mills and mines and what-have-you from him. Because of the way he turned his own estates around.’

‘He did what?’

‘I know. Hard to believe of the young scapegrace we knew back then, isn’t it? But apparently, when his father died, Rothersthorpe worked like the very devil to bring his holdings back from the verge of bankruptcy.’

Hard to believe? Impossible to believe! He’d been hopeless with money. And as for working, at any level, let alone like a devil…no, she just could not credit it.

‘Rose could do a lot worse,’ he said thoughtfully, his eyes following the couple as they conversed whilst passing each other in the set.

‘Y-you mean, you seriously think that Rose, and Lord Rothersthorpe…’

‘I don’t see why not. You heard what he said. He’s obviously come to town to look for a bride.’

Rose and Lord Rothersthorpe. Her head began to spin. It couldn’t be…

And yet they did make an extraordinarily handsome couple—him with his fair athleticism, and her with all her dark, spirited beauty.

‘I’ve seen it before with men of his class,’ Robert continued. ‘All of a sudden, they abandon their wild ways, make themselves a list of the qualities they want from a wife and come up to town to find a woman who has them. At least if Rothersthorpe does start to court her in earnest, we can rest assured that he wants her for herself. He has no pressing need of her fortune.’

Robert might as well have slapped her repeatedly in the face as deliver all those salient facts in such a blunt manner.

Eight years ago, Rothersthorpe had been so terrified of the prospect of matrimony that he’d fled at the mere mention of something that might have put him in danger of getting leg-shackled. But during the years they’d been apart, he’d turned his fortunes around through dint of hard work. And now he’d come to town to crown his achievements by acquiring a wife to preserve his proud lineage.

She did not need to ask Robert what Lord Rothersthorpe would require of a wife. Her own chaperon, Mrs Westerly, had told her often enough. Men of rank wanted an ornament to grace their house. And a substantial portion to swell their coffers. They also wanted a woman in the full bloom of health, so that they could be fairly sure of getting heirs and spares.

But, above all, they wanted a virgin.

She forced herself to watch Rose and Lord Rothersthorpe, as they circled one another on the dance floor, though their delight in each other was making her feel so old, and unwanted, and unattractive. And second-hand, to boot. She knew that she was not completely worthless in the scheme of things, but now her value was more like that of a chipped vase. One that had been removed from the best rooms and put to utilitarian purpose in the kitchens.

And she would just have to accept it.

They had all come to town, after all, to see if Rose could find a man who would want her for herself.

If it had been anyone but Rothersthorpe showing an interest in her, anyone but he who’d broken through Robert’s defences, she would be thrilled. He was exactly the kind of man they had hoped she would find.

She should be smiling with approval as they twirled round the ballroom with their arms round each other’s waists.

It was what everyone would expect from her.

So she smiled. And waved her fan indolently before her cheeks, as though everything was as it should be. Whilst inside…

She’d got out of the habit of pretending to be content with her lot, that was the trouble. Since Colonel Morgan’s death, she hadn’t had to pretend quite so often.

Well, she’d have to get back in the habit, that was all. She wasn’t going to let anything spoil Rose’s Season. Rose needed her to stand up to Robert and be her friend and advisor, not start acting like a silly, jealous schoolgirl.

She pulled on her social armour, rather in the same way she would have reached for a fire screen to shield herself from the heat of a blazing fire. And after a while, her smile began to feel less forced. Her manner towards Robert became more natural as she obliged him to chat of this and that.

Mrs Westerly would have been proud of her. She was elegant and poised. It might only be on the outside, but at least nobody, looking at her, would ever guess she felt as though she had been fatally wounded.

Chapter Three

‘Mama Lyddy, can you show me how to press flowers?’

Lydia looked up from her perusal of the meagre stock of invitations spread upon the desk. There were only two events they might attend tonight. A musical evening at Lord and Lady Chepstow’s, or a sort of rout party at the Lutterworths’.

She knew Robert would want her to persuade Rose to attend the musical evening. They did not receive many such invitations from persons of rank. Society hostesses were not warming to Rose. With all her money, and her exotic beauty, she was a distinct threat to the chances of their own daughters. And Robert would keep discouraging the ones who had sons who would definitely have benefited from a match with the daughter of a nabob.

Not that Rose looked at all downcast. In fact, she was smiling broadly as she waved her corsage from the night before.

‘I want to do what you did,’ she said. ‘I want to keep a scrapbook of my Season. And so I simply must preserve a bloom from the corsage I wore on the night I danced with my very first aristocrat.’

As Rose smiled dreamily, Lydia wondered how many scrapbooks had been filled with flowers hopelessly smitten young girls had preserved as mementoes of an encounter with Lord Rothersthorpe.

‘Of course, it is not as if I have a posy from an admirer, yet,’ Rose continued. ‘Not like you.’ She plumped herself down on a stool at Lydia’s side. ‘Oh, won’t you tell me all about the man who sent you those violets you have in your own scrapbook? You must have had very strong feelings for whoever gave them to you. For you sighed and went all misty-eyed when you turned over that page.’

Had she? Oh, lord, she’d tried so hard not to reveal her weakness for Lord Rothersthorpe, as she must now think of him. While Rose’s father had still been alive, she’d deliberately suppressed all thoughts of him, not wanting to be disloyal. And even once he’d died, well…it would still have been a form of betrayal to wish things had been other than they were. Colonel Morgan had been very good to her, in his way.

‘It was a silly infatuation, nothing more,’ she said. And last night had proved just how silly.

‘But you just said you were infatuated with him. So you must have—’

‘I did as I was told,’ she interrupted. ‘It was my duenna who insisted I create that scrapbook I showed you. I think she thought it would give me gainful employment during slack hours when she didn’t know quite what to do with me.’ She rubbed at a tension spot she could feel forming in the very centre of her forehead. She really, really did not want Rose badgering her about anything that might lead to her discovering that, once, Lord Rothersthorpe had got to the brink of proposing to her, before coming to his senses. He’d made it so obvious, last night, that he’d considered he’d had a lucky escape that she couldn’t bear to let anyone discover how deeply her feelings for him had run.

‘I really don’t even know why I kept the silly thing all these years. Or why I dragged it out to show you when we were discussing your Season. I was utterly miserable the whole time.’

‘Not the whole time, surely?’ Rose leant her elbow on the desk and rested her chin on her cupped palm. ‘Or you would not have spent three whole minutes staring at that arrangement of dried violets with that faraway look in your eyes.’

‘Three whole minutes?’ She shifted in her seat, taking care to avoid Rose’s inquisitive stare. ‘You are surely exaggerating.’

‘Oh, but it was.’

‘I was probably thinking of something quite different. A…a shopping list. Or wondering how soon we would be able to discover who are the best modistes this year. I am so out of touch.’

‘You are trying to hide something!’ Rose grinned impishly. ‘Were you in love with someone, before you married Papa? Did you have an admirer? Oh, how romantic! Won’t you tell me?’

Sometimes, she did not know quite how to handle Rose. She was so perceptive it was no easy matter to fob her off.

‘He did not send me this posy because he wished to become my suitor. He sent it out of sympathy because I had been ill, that was all.’ Though now she wasn’t looking at everything Rothersthorpe did through blinkers, she recalled that she’d been ill several times and he’d only sent her a posy once.

At the time, she’d been elated by the note that had accompanied it, which told her that he’d missed her at the ball she had told him she was to attend and how he hoped she would recover speedily so he could dance with her again.

And then almost crushed by his awkwardness the next time they’d met. The way he’d attempted to brush aside the whole incident, making up some tale about a ragged flower seller and a win on the horses, and what was a fellow to do?

And he’d looked so worried he might have raised false hopes by sending her those flowers, she’d felt obliged to reassure him.

‘You should take care,’ she’d said playfully, ‘not to make a habit of sending poorly young ladies flowers in that fashion, or one day one of them might get the wrong idea. And then where would you be?’

His relief had been so palpable it had cut her to the quick.

Had he ever done anything but hurt her?

‘It was ridiculously sentimental of me to preserve the entire thing,’ right down to the ribbon, she finally admitted, to herself as much as Rose. ‘But then it was the only posy I received my entire Season. From any man. For whatever reason. But I repeat, there was never any chance of anything romantic developing between us,’ she said, with just a touch of asperity creeping into her voice as she recalled his words from the night before. ‘The romantic thing was the way your father came to my rescue…’

‘Pooh,’ said Rose scornfully. ‘There was never a man less romantic than Papa. He treated you as though you were one of his platoon most of the time. Barking orders at you and practically expecting you to salute…’

‘Rose, you will not speak with such disrespect of your papa. He was a good man. A decent man. He gave me a home and—’

‘And made you work hard for your keep,’ Rose persisted.

‘He gave me a home and a family,’ Lydia continued firmly. ‘And I grew very fond of him. I know he had a bit of a temper, but you yourself know that his bark was always worse than his bite. For heaven’s sake, he’d been in the army all his life. Of course he was prone to barking orders, as you put it. It was just his way. And what is more, young lady, it was you who taught me exactly how little he truly was to be feared. I was not in your house five minutes before I saw you had him wrapped round your little finger, you and your sister both. The way you used to just sit there, waiting until he’d finished his tirade, and then tilt your heads to one side and smile up at him in the full knowledge that he was helpless to refuse you two anything. And he expected me to teach you and Marigold how to behave!’ She flung up her hands in mock horror, causing Rose to giggle.

‘Well, I could never teach either of you anything about how to wrap poor unsuspecting males around your fingers, but if you really want to begin a scrapbook,’ she said, turning to the corsage Rose had tossed on to the desk, ‘I can teach you how to preserve flowers.’

‘I think you are trying to steer me away from the subject of your own posy,’ Rose observed astutely.

‘Yes, because it is painful for me to think about it,’ she admitted. ‘I…well, I did become rather too attached to him.’

‘Oh,’ said Rose, immediately contrite. ‘I would not hurt you for the world. And if he really was your first love, and then you had to marry Papa instead…oh…I am sorry. Forgive me?’

‘I never said he was my first love,’ she protested, blushing.

‘I will not mention him again,’ said Rose, filling Lydia with relief. ‘Though I should love to know who it was. And if he is married now…’

Lydia winced. She might have known that Rose’s idea of not mentioning the donor of her posy of violets would be to launch immediately into a volley of questions.

‘The first thing we need to do,’ said Lydia, firmly changing the subject, ‘is to separate the bunch, so that we can press each flower individually. Although it might be better to select just one bloom, or we will need a dozen scrapbooks. You will have many occasions you may want to commemorate in a similar way.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Of course you will. I dare say you already have a pile of tickets and programmes from various events we have attended already.’

‘That’s true.’

‘But before we start, I am mindful that in a very short while we are likely to have a room full of callers—’ one of whom was bound to be Lord Rothersthorpe, since a man should always call upon his partners from the previous night’s entertainment ‘—and we have not yet discussed which event you would like to attend this evening.’

Rose beamed at her. ‘That is what I love about you, Mama Lyddy. You never try to dictate to me.’

‘What would be the point?’ Lydia pursed her lips. ‘I learned long ago that it is far too much like hard work to attempt to cross you. Besides, I never felt I was old enough to tell you what to do. I feel more like…an older sister, than a mother to you.’ At least, she had until last night, when for the first time Lord Rothersthorpe’s cutting comments had made her feel every inch the chaperon.

Although she would not, absolutely not be the kind of chaperon he so despised. She was not, and never would be, a dragon, pushing her charge into situations that would make her miserable.

‘I shall, of course, give you my advice, but that is all. You must make up your own mind.’

‘I only wish I could. About where I want to go tonight, I mean. I…I think,’ she said, with a slight blush, ‘that I shall be able to tell you later, though.’

‘Oh?’ It was not like Rose to be so indecisive, but then she’d never come under the influence of a practised charmer like Rothersthorpe before. If she knew anything about Rose, she was not going to declare her intentions about where to go tonight until she’d discovered where he meant to go. She took a penknife and sliced through the ribbon which had held Rose’s corsage together with jerky finality.

‘Well, there is no rush,’ she said to Rose as she pulled the corsage apart. ‘It would just be preferable to warn Robert, one way or the other. He has not your love of spontaneity.’

They spent the next few minutes selecting the best blooms for preservation, finding sheets of blotting paper and dragging the heaviest books down from the shelves.

By the time the doorknocker heralded the arrival of their first morning caller, not only Lydia’s writing desk, but also the marble-topped console table under the window were strewn with all the paraphernalia associated with their activity.

Rose glanced at the mess they’d made, then at the door with alarm.

‘Do not be afraid to let your admirers see you employed in some genteel pursuit, Rose. My own chaperon told me that men like to imagine their future wives being gainfully employed.’ Though what was gainful about pressing flowers, or, in her own case, creating acres of decorative embroidery, she could not think.

Surely it would be better to demonstrate an ability to plan a menu for twenty guests at a moment’s notice, or deal with the personal problems of servants in such a way that the household continued to run smoothly? In her experience, that was what her husband had valued about her.

If Colonel Morgan had thought all she did all day was sit around pressing flowers, he would have been most annoyed.

Still, they were not talking about her, but about Rose. And she was determined to prove to Lord Rothersthorpe that their relationship was a good one. The kind of chaperon he’d implied she was would never let her charge enjoy herself so much that the room got strewn with flowers and books like this, would she? She would have her sitting on a chair looking like a waxwork dummy. Only rather more rigid.

Though the effect was spoiled, somewhat, when he didn’t come with the first wave of gentlemen. Mr Crimmer and Mr Bentley, who were sons of wealthy businessmen, grinned at one another when they realised they were first and, making straight for Rose, they pulled up seats as close to her as they dared.

She would greet him as graciously as she received any of the others, of course. And no matter what he said, or did, she was not going to lash out as she’d done the night before. She’d spent many hours, when she should have been asleep, reliving the few minutes when he’d dumped her on Colonel Morgan’s sofa, then fled for the hills. And come to the conclusion that if he could look upon it as a lucky escape, then so could she.

Next to arrive were the two naval officers whose names she could never recall. She really ought to, they were here so often. The trouble was that in almost identical uniforms, and with their blue eyes, fair hair and hard jaws, there was little to tell them apart.

Although when pressed, Robert declared he couldn’t recall the names of half the fellows who cluttered up his house these days, either. ‘Never knew I had so many friends, until I produced an attractive sister,’ he’d snarled.

In the light of his usually overprotective attitude towards Rose, she was a little surprised he had not come in the moment the clock struck eleven, to keep a watchful eye on proceedings. He always grumbled that though he could not actually bar any of these fellows from his house, he could at least let them know he would not permit any of them to take liberties with his sister.

Was it too much to hope he’d taken her words last night to heart?

Or had it been the way Rose had deliberately caused a stir by dancing, when Robert’s earlier refusal had meant she should not have done so?

Well, whatever had caused him to stay away, Lydia could only be glad. The atmosphere was a lot less fraught than usual. Mr Crimmer and Mr Bentley were genially competing to be the one from whom she accepted her scissors, or a withered bloom.

But in spite of the atmosphere that prevailed over the others, every time the doorknocker sounded, she felt herself winding up a little tighter.

The room was feeling somewhat crowded when a young lawyer and Lord Abergele came in one after the other. She had to admire Lord Abergele’s persistence. In spite of Robert’s continual discouragement, he kept on coming right back for yet another rebuff. She supposed he had hopes that his handsome face, and the speaking looks he gave Rose from those limpid green eyes, would soften her to the extent she would defy her brother. He might well succeed. There was nothing Rose liked more than a challenge.

And she was certainly rising to the challenge of having a room full of suitors vying for her attention. Rose managed them all with a dexterity that filled Lydia with admiration. If she felt a preference for any of them, she was taking such care not to show it that not even Lydia could attempt a guess.

Until Lord Rothersthorpe walked in.

Rose’s face lit up, then she actually stood up, crossed the room and held out her hand.

She hadn’t minded when the others paused only to shake her hand and utter the briefest of commonplaces, before making for Rose. But when he virtually ignored her, it really hurt.

She felt completely in tune with the men who glowered at Rothersthorpe as he bowed over Rose’s extended hand, though at least they had the freedom to leave when they couldn’t bear watching the pair admiring each other any longer.

As they began to drift away, in varying attitudes of despondency, it was left entirely to Lydia to bid them farewell, since Rose was engrossed in showing Lord Rothersthorpe what she had been doing with her corsage.

She supposed she ought to reprimand Rose for such lack of manners, but she was still striving to prove she was not a repressive ogress. Besides which, she knew exactly the effect Lord Rothersthorpe could have on a female. She had stretched her own chaperon’s tolerance to the limits, in order to snatch a few moments with him in private, even if it was only the limited privacy of the corner of a crowded room.

She could even excuse Lord Abergele for furtively stuffing the slice of cake he’d been eating into his pocket before shaking her hand in farewell. Lord Rothersthorpe had such an unsettling effect that there was no telling what madness he could provoke.

When the others had all gone, Lydia chose a chair as far from Rose’s work table as she could, sat down and smoothed out her skirts with hands that were not quite steady.

She was not eavesdropping. Absolutely not. It was just that it was quite impossible not to hear every word they were saying, now that they were the only ones left. She had no choice but to sit and listen to him flirting gently with her charge.

If he had wanted to humiliate her, he could not have chosen a better method.

‘Lord Chepstow? Yes, he is a friend of mine,’ Lord Rothersthorpe was saying. ‘And, yes, I do have an invitation to his musical evening.’

Just as she suspected. Rose was determined to find out where Lord Rothersthorpe was going, before making her own plans for the evening.

Her insides tightened and twisted into a knot as she watched the animation in Rose’s face. However would she cope if these two made a match of it?

She would just have to, that was all. It wasn’t as if she’d ever dared hope she might become…something, to him. This was nothing new. It was just…well, it was quite a different thing, knowing she had no chance, in her head, and seeing him courting another woman, right before her eyes.

Oh, why had their paths had to cross now, like this? Why could he not have been safely married to someone else?

If he really began to court Rose in earnest, whatever was she going to do?

Nothing. Nothing, of course.

She loved Rose. She wanted Rose to be happy.

So she would just have to stamp down hard on these pangs of jealousy, whenever they took hold of her.

He had never been hers. She had long since accepted that fact. She had. Once she’d married Colonel Morgan, she’d made a point of counting her blessings, daily, and refusing to allow herself to hanker after the impossible. In that way, she’d gradually schooled herself to be content with her lot.

Only now it was looking as though it might not have been impossible. If only Lord Rothersthorpe had changed into this pillar of society sooner…if only he’d cared enough for her to have become this man that people now admired…

But he hadn’t. That was what she had to remember. He hadn’t turned his fortunes around because he’d wanted to provide her with a home and security. On the contrary, his feelings for her had been so fleeting that he was standing here today, flirting with Rose whilst discounting her very presence in the room.

‘But no,’ he was saying with a laugh that sent a bitter pang shafting right through her. Once upon a time he had exerted himself to amuse her, as he was now attempting to amuse Rose.

Though it was utterly ludicrous to feel as though he was deliberately attempting to gouge her heart out of her chest with a teaspoon.

‘I shall not be attending the Chepstows’ musicale. It is Wednesday. Almack’s beckons.’

Rose’s face fell as dramatically as did her own stomach. In her own case it was because his determination to attend Almack’s meant that he really was serious about finding a wife.

She’d known it, deep down. His behaviour last night had told her, even before Robert had started to talk about how men of his class always settled down, eventually. He had not gone to the card room at all. And when he’d danced, he had done so with an eligible girl, not just one of the wallflowers.

Though in Rose’s case, the despondency was because of the impossibility of gaining vouchers.

‘As if I would want to attend such a stuffy club,’ said Rose with a toss of her head. ‘From what I hear, it is all rules and regulations, and people looking down their noses at everyone.’

‘Yet that is where a gentleman has to go when he is searching for a bride,’ he said to her with a meaningful look

‘Well, if a man wants to marry me,’ replied Rose mutinously, ‘he will have to come looking for me where I am.’

Lord Rothersthorpe finally turned towards Lydia and deigned to speak.

‘You have your hands full with your spirited young charge, do you not, Mrs Morgan?’

The words might have sounded as though he was expressing sympathy, but she could not forget what he’d said the night before, about preferring a girl who spoke her mind to one who became easily tongue-tied. Besides, there was a challenging glitter in his eyes which she was beginning to recognise. It gave her the distinct impression he had only brought her into the conversation in order to taunt her.

‘On the contrary,’ she said firmly. ‘I am in complete agreement with her. Rose has no need to go hunting for a husband. Any man who wishes to marry her must do her the courtesy of demonstrating that he values her enough to court her properly.’

‘Strange,’ he said, with a lift of one eyebrow. ‘Your attitude towards marriage appears to have undergone a complete reversal since you were having your own Season.’

How could he fling that in her face? How could he mock her for letting him treat her so contemptibly? Oh, how she wished she’d had the strength to turn him from her door when he’d come calling in those days. Instead of letting him…toy with her.

‘It is not my attitude that is in question here,’ she said coldly, looking him straight in the eyes. ‘But the attitude of any man who would aspire to the hand of my stepdaughter.’

He bowed his head. ‘I stand corrected,’ he said. Then he turned back to Rose. ‘And accept my apologies if I implied that you are not worthy of pursuit. When I spoke of your spirit, it was entirely from admiration, I do assure you. I dislike the kind of girls who put on die-away airs to make men feel they need a champion. A man needs a partner when he chooses a wife, not a woman so feeble she could never be anything but an encumbrance.’

Well, he could not have made his feelings plainer if he had walked up to her and slapped her face. He despised her for having been so weak and vulnerable, when he’d known her, did he? It was just as well she hadn’t told Mrs Westerly what he’d said as he’d carried her into the house, then, or she would have clapped him in matrimonial irons so fast he wouldn’t have known what hit him. And he would have been stuck with her and all her…encumbrances. If he was being this determined to let her know he regretted having almost proposed to her, then it was a good job she hadn’t taken him seriously.

Not for the first time, she thanked God Colonel Morgan had seen fit to marry her. He had never, ever looked upon her as an encumbrance. Oh, Rose might have said he made her work hard for her keep, but at least he made her feel as though she could play a valuable role within his household.

Lord Rothersthorpe had done himself no favours with Rose, either, to judge from the way she was looking at him as though she had never seen him before. The way she had felt last night, when she’d first begun to suspect she had been mistaken about his nature. Rose might be a little outspoken, but she was also a tender-hearted girl. She was bound to recoil from a man who could speak so callously of people who had some form of disadvantage.

Thank heaven Rose had spotted that in him now. She would not waste years pining for a man who turned out not to have been worth a single one of the tears she’d shed over him.

And even though he would still be out somewhere looking for a suitable wife, at least she wouldn’t have to watch him do it. She thought she could probably handle the news of his marriage to anyone, so long as it wasn’t Rose. It would have been extremely painful to have watched them making a life together, having children together, growing old together, when he had so neatly wriggled out of having to do any such thing with her.

As Rose made an appropriate reply, she deliberately looked away. And it was then Lydia noticed her hands had clenched until they’d formed fists.

Well, now she could unclench them. Rose had seen through him. Whoever Lord Rothersthorpe decided to marry, it was highly unlikely to be Rose. So she wouldn’t have to purchase Rose’s trousseau and write out invitations, and organise the wedding breakfast, all the while feeling as though she was being torn apart inside.

Before she had much time to wonder why she still felt as though Lord Rothersthorpe’s marriage was an issue that would cause her such grief, when she’d just decided he was not worth a single one of the tears she’d shed after he’d demonstrated that she didn’t mean enough to him to give up his bachelor freedoms for, the door burst open and Robert strode in.

‘Thought you had better see this, Mama Lyddy,’ he said, waving a letter he was clutching in his hand. ‘Oh,’ he said, coming to a halt when he spied Rothersthorpe. ‘I thought all Rose’s admirers had left.’

‘All but me,’ he replied, crossing the room with his hand extended.

Robert folded the letter swiftly before accepting his hand. ‘Have you had tea?’ Robert glanced at the detritus left behind by the pack of Rose’s younger suitors.

‘I do beg your pardon,’ said Lydia, aghast to discover that she’d spent the entire duration of his visit flailing around in a morass of negative emotions which had apparently robbed her of the ability to act as a competent hostess. ‘I shall ring for some more. If you are staying?’

‘Please do not trouble yourself now,’ he replied sarcastically. ‘I can see your stepson has some pressing business he wishes to discuss with you.’

‘Yes,’ said Robert, looking rather taken aback by Lord Rothersthorpe’s rudeness. ‘Very pressing business, as a matter of fact.’

‘And I have still to call upon Miss Hill.’

Of course. His other dance partner from the night before.

She did not miss the way Rose’s lips tightened in displeasure at his announcement that this had been a mere duty call.

Oh dear. That was two marks against him.

So it came as no surprise when, the moment he’d left, Rose informed her that she rather thought she would as soon go to the Lutter-worths’ soirée, as anywhere.

The one place where they were certain not to encounter Lord Rothersthorpe, even if he did decide to take Rose’s hint and abandon his plans to attend Almack’s. Now that he was in the market, he would have so many invitations to choose from that he would be spoilt for choice. And he’d become so very top-lofty nowadays, to judge from their two brief meetings, that he would not deign to enter the house of a family that had made their fortune from pickles.

‘I am sorry,’ said Robert, ‘but I really do think you should read this.’ He pulled out the folded letter from the pocket where he’d tucked it earlier. ‘It is from Marigold.’

‘Oh. Is there some problem at Westdene?’

‘It is Cissy, I’m afraid.’

‘No!’ She snatched the letter from him with a trembling hand.

‘I did not want to worry you about her before,’ Robert confessed. ‘But all the reports I have received suggest she is growing worse by the day.’

Lydia sank down on to a chair to read the letter. Rose came up behind her, so she could read over her shoulder.

‘Robert,’ said Rose with a soft gasp, when she came to the middle of the page. ‘How could you have kept this from us?’

‘Because I thought she would improve! I thought at first, when Mrs Broome wrote that she was not doing very well, that it was only to be expected, but that after a reasonable period of time, she would settle down. And I did not want to worry you. I did not want any shadow to fall over your Season, Rose.’

He paced to the console table and began to fiddle with the flowers scattered across its surface.

‘Things have not always been between us as they should. I regret that now, and I wanted to…to make it up to you. I wanted this time in London to be perfect…’

‘And to think I was grateful for the way you took charge of the more tedious aspects of organising this trip to town,’ Lydia breathed. She’d actually told him that she could not have picked a finer house than this one he’d rented for them, nor staffed it with more suitable servants. She’d appreciated the fact that he’d seen to the provision of carriages and horses, and been incredibly impressed when he’d even managed, through the amazingly wide circle of acquaintances he had, to arrange for Rose to have a court presentation. And all the time, he’d been keeping…this from her.

She looked down at the letter which she’d crushed between her fingers.

‘But no more. This has gone too far. We must return to Westdene,’ she said, getting to her feet and moving towards the door. ‘And I am sorry, Rose, but this means the end of your Season—’

‘Not necessarily,’ put in Robert.

‘Of course it does,’ cried Rose. ‘Lydia has to go to Cissy. And I cannot stay in town without a proper chaperon. And anyway, how could you think I would want to stay here now I know what it has cost Cissy?’

‘I didn’t, of course. It is just that I think I have found a way to deal with this problem without curtailing your Season completely.’

‘Cissy is not a problem,’ said Rose indignantly. ‘She is a darling!’

Lydia looked at the way brother and sister were squaring up to each other and sighed. They’d come so far in the months since their father’s death. The Colonel had been hopeless at demonstrating his feelings for his children when they’d been little. It had left Robert resentful at being sent away to school in England while he’d kept the girls with him, and them feeling secondbest. They only saw that he’d been educated as an English gentleman, while they’d had ayahs and tutors. It had taken some time to explain that the Colonel had been afraid Robert might succumb to some tropical infection, as his English mother had done. That he was trying to protect him, rather than rejecting him. And that, conversely, he couldn’t bear to be parted from all his children.

She could not let all their newly established rapport disintegrate, just because Lord Rothersthorpe had put her out of countenance. For that was what it boiled down to. She had been angry before Robert had even entered the room.

‘I think we should both try to calm down and hear what Robert has to say,’ she said wearily. ‘There is no sense in us all falling out with each other.’

While she sank into the nearest chair, Rose flounced on to another and folded her arms.

‘It was meeting Lord Rothersthorpe that put me in mind of a solution, funnily enough,’ Robert began. ‘It made me recall how I used to treat the house, before Lydia married Father. How I used to invite parties of friends to row up and picnic in the grounds. And how popular those outings used to be.’

‘You mean, even though we will be staying at Westdene, we could still write and invite people down for the day?’ Rose sat up straighter. ‘Yes, that would work. What do you think, Mama Lyddy?’

Lydia flushed and looked down at her feet. It had been on one of those picnics that Lord Rothersthorpe had raised her hopes, for those few brief, exhilarating minutes. Robert surely was not going to suggest she organise another? It would mean reliving the pain of rejection all over again.

Fortunately, before she could draw breath to voice her reluctance, Robert spoke again.

‘That was not quite what I had in mind. I rather thought we might have a fully fledged house party. Mama Lyddy accused me of not letting you get to know any of these young men who claim to have been smitten by you. So I thought, if you have them about you all day, we will soon discover what they are really made of.’

Rose let out a shriek of delight, leapt to her feet and flung her arms round Robert’s neck.

‘Robert, you are brilliant! It is just the thing. I need only invite—’ she broke off with a blush ‘—the people I really like. And we will soon see what they are really made of, by the way they react to Cissy.’

‘Ah,’ said Robert with a frown. ‘I had not thought of that. And really, you know, perhaps that wouldn’t be quite fair. You cannot use Cissy as some sort of…test.’

‘What did you expect when you suggested having visitors, then, Robert?’ Lydia fumed. ‘Did you think I would keep her hidden away?’

‘Well, no. But she spends most of her time in the nursery, anyway.’

‘If anyone,’ said Rose, ‘says one unkind word to Cissy, I will send them packing.’

‘It might be a little too late for Cissy by then, though…’ said Robert pensively.

‘She is not as fragile as all that,’ said Lydia. ‘Provided we are there to love her, she will not care what anyone else may say to her, or think of her.’

‘Are you quite sure?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Well, probably. ‘And as Rose has so astutely pointed out, what better way to find out what a person is really made of, than to force him to confront a girl with all of Cissy’s disadvantages?’

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